The present invention relates to search engine services, and more specifically to a search engine service utilizing the addition of noise.
Organizations that operate web search engines acquire a great deal of information about individuals based on the search terms individuals enter into search engines. Search terms reveal individuals everyday activities, business pursuits and personal thoughts. This large scale and very detailed accumulation of individuals' searches leads to a great number of privacy concerns.
Some search engines have decided to make it part of their business strategy to offer anonymous search services. Existing anonymous search engine implantations differ from most search engines in that they do not log search terms and results, or the operating organization only maintains the logs for a minimum period of time. However, with this type of implementation, the organization that operates the search engine still has access to the search terms and results.